Show Skins With This Rating Or Higher Not Working

I agree. Since Windowblinds is *the* flagship Stardock product, it makes sense, to me, to be showcasing the *best* of what can be achieved with the program.

To quote a comment from a particularly bad hack job:

Totally agree with WG and Bebi...

Those hacks are your future skinners just breaking into the scene. The skins should be in the galleries so the Authors can get feedback so they can improve. As unsightly as they are, it is important for those authors to be noticed so that they can improve. I wish I had more time to offer them to help them grow. In most cases, people are all alone when starting skinning and they need assistance from the community. Noone sees personal pages so the skins will go unnoticed.   

It's one thing to want to get and receive feedback...it's another to actually take heed of it and actually *listen* to it to grow and improve which doesn't seem to be happening.

The current policy on WB submission is that unless they are rips, don't work etc, the skin goes public. Once you start moderating skins on quality grounds you leave yourself wide open to further criticism.

{moderator hat off}
These are probably the worst couple of skins I've ever seen. Not only that, the author has failed to follow all the good advice given to him. Quality not quantity should be the mark to follow. Skins as poor as those need to be personal page only...
{moderator hat on}

Don't know about the filter not working. I have to have mine set at 'all' to moderate.

But it's ok to moderate wallpapers for quality control?

Fuzzy you crack me up.

Zoomba submitted a ticket yesterday for the filter issue to be adressed.

This is all well and good NT.. if 'said' skinners actually listen to the feedback, on the flipside a lot of good stuff gets buried. Perhaps a noob area is in order OR.. as I have always suggested, a real WIP section where each skin gets its own thread and the author posts progress and asks for feedback. A place to nurture and harvest new skinners if you will.

It just doesn't look good on the community as a whole when the entire first page of stardocks backbone application is filled up with unfinished, unpolished 'learner' skins...and the inevitable flaming that accompanies them.

Only a few WB skins are submitted each week whereas there are hundreds of wallpapers   

Well i agree and disagree...

It'll be good that the option to don't show skin under the ratings you set works. that's a point.

I agree with Night Train we need to help those beginners in skinning and their works should be see by everyone...

But in an other hand what i see today is "some" beginners who made WB skins in fews days upload them and don't care about the feedback/councils of good skinner (and sometimes Masters) that is simply odd.

How could they learn and improve if they don't care of councils and tips?

I'm not for a quality control as hard as the QC in wallpapers gallery.
as statued by WC/SD (i could be wrong) Wallpapers need to be good to show. But WC is a skinning site so all others skins can be in main gallery, so wallpapers under 2.5 stars don't show up in main gallery and stay in Personal pages.
I agree... that allow me to improve my skills to try to get one in main gallery

But in case of WB, i think it could be interesting to not allow skins in main gallery under 1 or 1.5 stars and like for Walls to put them on personal pages.

why? cause like that hopefully, some beginners will improve their works and try to learn more.
Why i think that could be work? cause moderators in general (i can't talk for them) as show before it seems that they not bash skinners so in general you don't see WB rate as first as less than 2 stars.
So it could be works...

More it could be interesting in the case of a WB skin rate by a mods under 2 stars that in the mail to tell to the skinner that his skin is available in his gallery to put the links to the Wiki tutorials or/and some others in articles section.
As remind forums can be there too to allow the skinners to put a link to their skin to get a feedback and councils from the community isn't it?

I'm not here to bash to work of some of those beginner i'm one too i'm making my 3th only and i still learn. In general i don't comment this kind of skin but send sometimes a email like yesterday morning to give some links to good tutorials or tips.
I know how hard is it to make a WB for a beginner and how that can be make fear.
I hope many people will try to begin in skinning. And i know we will be there to help us/them.

My really 2cts:

Why not make a (in fact several) WIP section?

Explain:

I could be wrong but i believe non-subscribers see only skins rate as 7/10 right?

So we could add in each gallery a Work in Progress sub-category like "General", "Os", "..."
and in place of put the skins rate under 2 stars (4/10) in personnal pages moderators put them in WIP sections (or the skinners themsefl) to allow people to see it and help.

THOSE WIP SUB CATEGORY WILL BE SEE BY EVERYONE

AND for subscribers add an option in settings to enable/disable "show the WIPs sections"
like that people who want help can help and those who don't want or can't help can see only the finished works.

Personally I'm all for someone wanting to learn to skin, but when they are obviously NOT making an effort to learn and just start pumping out junk like there's no tomorrow...in some cases several skins in a day!...I repeat...several skins a day!...then they need to be regulated to the personal pages. Its completely unfair to the ones that are taking the time to learn and put out quality stuff.

There are plenty of new skinners in the WB library that are at least making an effort to learn and you can see they're submissions improving, but to allow this obvious junk...it feels more like spam than anything.

Another suggestion; why not make it that skins with 1 star or less won't be included in the download stats?

Alternatively: Skins with 1 star or less will be automatically moved to the personal gallery after (three?) days.

That way "newbies" get a chance to get their skins out there and receive comments by their peers. If their first skin is crap it will disappear quickly and not get many downloads, but they will be able to either improve the same skin or take the comments into consideration for a new skin.

I think the underlaying problem is that there are always (a very small percentage) of people who identify themselves on how many forum-points/awards/Download-counts they have. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but some will try to get to their desired points as cheaply and as fast as possible and hence will flood the forum/galleries with their "artwork".
In the four (five?) years I have been here on WC, I have seen exactly that kind of behaviour in all possible areas (from comments to skins). Once those uploaders have reached their points/award/promotion, they are more than often a now show.

A WIP-thread has been suggested several times now and it is my oppinion that such an area should be a part of WC, especially since it is the "daughter"-site of the WindowBlinds producers and the official skin-site for this application.
However, a WIP area will only ever help those people who really want to improve themselves. I get the slight impression that the uploader of those last skins would probably not upload anything into a WIP area if there is no "glam" and "publicity" attached to it.

Having a WIP section would be a great idea...and the moderators could regulate WIP's to that section rather than flood the library with unfinished stuff that looks like it was done in MSPaint.

And I wanna be clear that I don't want to discourage anyone from trying to learn skinning...but they at least have to make an honest effort at learning before they start flooding the libraries with slapped together stuff. There are lots of people here that are more than willing to share tips. Start a skin....get some tips...improve the skin...post some screenshots for comments and more tips....polish it some more...show that you at least are trying to learn. But please don't subject us to slapped together stuff just because its fun for you...if thats the case have fun....but please keep it in your personal library and give your friends the link...then slap away. There are a lot of people here that take this stuff seriously and don't deserve to get they're hard work buried under it. And it certainly does not do the software any justice either justice.

I think that every current recognized/accomplished skinner needs to step back an inch or two...and think back to when they may [or may not] have been in an exact same position as these new people/uploads.

One of the reasons that the Wincustomize rating system is in place is so that the 'expert' skinners/users can generate the outcome of a filter for what the public actually gets to see...or not see.

It is THAT which determines what becomes the 'public face' of skins and skinning on Wincustomize.com. It is only those who have the capacity to 'view all' that even get to see what some may argue as sub-standard.
But...
We all started somewhere....I know mine were/are crappy, too. Does my skins' quality make me less suited as a legitimate member/contributor to our site? I'd hope not.

Wincustomize.com is a skinning site. For skinners.
Some skinners heed advice. Some give it. Some ignore it.
That's life.

I personally would hate to see any aspiring/trying/inept[?] skinner be perhaps degraded through exclusion/segregation.

The comparison with the wallpaper gallery/uploads doesn't wash as there are significantly more submissions to 'walls'... a good order of magnitude [or two] different.

This current thread is more because of the current filter 'bug' than anything else. Once fixed the status quo is restored....

at less we all can see that the someone in question has got the advice if we take the time to see back in his skin comments

Yeah, I just had a look at his gallery and I see about 7 blinds there so far with very low ratings. I think we should encourage him as much as we can and give him advice but I can't help but notice he submitted another blind just today and this one did not implement much if any of the advice given to him by any of the WB pros. I don't understand why he would upload so frequently without making any improvements. You can't look for new advice without first heeding the advice given to you yesterday, can you?

I thought the ratings restriction was okay. When I first showed up some of my work did not get into the main gallery. I worked really hard on them mind you, but it only made me work harder to produce better products. Getting a higher rating is one of many incentives to put more effort into your work. Aren't those kinds of incentives a good thing?

I guess the argument is whether or not, by implementing restrictions, we are discouraging newbie skinners. If they are serious about it, I'd say the answer is no. If they are looking to get feedback on work, there are always the forums, email correspondance, take a screenshot, etc. It all depends, really, on the skinner.


If there are to be no restrictions, I don't think I mind all that much. It's not like there's an onslaught of low rated submissions. But I just wondered why did WC decide to have restrictions in the first place and what made you guys change your mind?

Hey Jafo, it use to be the way, there are no more rating filters on galleries, the public sees all skins.
Using bootskins as an example, filter use to be 2 1/2 stars, there is a boot added yesterday rated 2 stars, it already has over 450 downloads, would not be that many if filtered and not seen by general public.

The filter system is broken at the moment, but how many people use it.  A lot have it set to see all so 450 downloads wouldn't be that much with 2 1/2 million members and say 25% have it set to see all.  But as has been said, remember back to when you were new(skinners that is).  Everyone starts somewhere.  Just hope the noobies take the advice thats given.

Yes, it seems (I have not tested)the personal setting going thru ones account, but the galleries themselves are no longer filtered by rating for general public. Everyone that comes to WC now sees all skins, walls etc, not just members with setting at show all.



Yes it would be, back in the filtered days, a boot only seen by members would be lucky to get that many downloads in a week, it has that in just over a day. It is now at almost 500 dl, only 10 dl by members.

Fixing the filter indeed would help, but I'm curious, everytime I suggest a WIP section, its either shot down or ignored so i ask...why not? Jafo said "remember when you were a new skinner" Well, i do, it was the WIP section of Neowin that kept me interested in both skinning and customizing showing what I had done so far and seeing previews of what others were up to. I basically lived there for several years..so did many others and a lot of great visual styles started there. So again.. why not a WIP section?

I don't think you will find any WB skinners that would object to crappy skins getting pushed into a WIP section. Except the crappy skin makers of course.   

I trust (and I am sure most people do)the moderators to weed out the skins not ready for primetime. Perhaps the Authors could be pointed to a forum section for people to assist if a library is out of the question. I am sure that once something is established, there will be many people offering their opinion. People that don't skin can have a way to help out in the community.
It possibly could actually be a build it and they will come sort of thing.

The Skinartistry workshop was started for just this purpose. The goal was to help new and old skinners weed out the bugs before releasing. I like to think that it improved the overall quality of the libraries here as well.

In the end, some people simply don't listen. They are in such a rush to get their downloads that they ignore obvious flaws and bugs that were pointed out to them. Well after a couple thousand downloads, it really doesn't matter does it. Your work is still amateur, your reputation is non existant, and people have grown tired of helping you.   

gotta get back to work, no time to proof, hope I didnt make an ass of myself again.   

I agree Jafo...and its not really about doing any of that to anyone. But at the same time I would hate like hell to see the library degrade to nothing but starter/unfinished skins. If it were just one skin and someone was seriously seeking pointers/tips/help to hone his/her skills and improve that skin. But it seems they have no real interest in doing that. They say they're getting better but there is no evidence of that unless they mean they found new colors

And I know this will also cause traffic here to slow down as well considering how picky people are and many don't even bother searching past the first page. For example, before my Intrigue docks were featured they were just a page or two back in the library and were doing ok downloads wise...but after they were featured the downloads went from around 10 or so a day to roughly 200 to 300 a day. I were new and came here and saw nothing but starter skins in the first few pages I wouldn't bother going any further...it would just be to painful to look at and the ones that did do quality stuff would suffer since they wouldn't even be seen.

I just think people need to earn the right/privilege to be put in a library with the ones that actually care about what they're doing.